


Die Moritat

by sophialemongrenade



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, blood kink a little bit? sort of?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22753312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophialemongrenade/pseuds/sophialemongrenade
Summary: You are struggling through your twenties, attempting to manage both your chronic illness and your depression, and failing at both. You encounter the Joker on your way home one night after he has been injured in a shoot-out with the police, and you gift him a knife that you once used to attempt suicide. Things go about as well as you'd expect.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Original Female Character(s), Joker (DCU)/Reader, Joker (DCU)/You
Comments: 18
Kudos: 75





	1. Doch Das Messer Sieht Man Nicht

You are twenty-four years old.

In your purse, you carry a knife that once tried to kill you. Ostensibly, it is protection, a sharp edge between yourself and the world. Objectively, it has tasted your blood and still sometimes whispers to you for more. You can look to the mess in the crooks of your arms whenever you need a reminder of how that would turn out. You ignore its requests.

You are twenty-four years old.

You work late-shift circulation at the Logerquist branch. It’s a smaller library, and it’s not open very late, but at any time other than the height of summer, you can expect it to be dark when you get off work. _I need this knife_ , you tell yourself. The part of you that voices your feelings not in words, but in aches in the gut, tells you that you should leave it at home. You don’t live in a very dangerous neighborhood; you have been catcalled, but never mugged. You have taken self-defense classes, you know you can use your keys, and you know it is illegal to carry a switchblade knife in the state of New Jersey. This quiet, aching part of you knows the real reason you carry the knife; you are desperate for a reason to show it the taste of anyone who isn’t you. An even quieter part of you, a dark part that converses with the knife against your will, knows other reasons you carry it. 

You are twenty-four years old.

On your way home each night, one hand in your purse around the handle of the knife, you jaywalk without looking both ways. You walk slowly and draw out the length of your journey, taking dangerous and badly-lit streets as late at night as you possibly can. Once, a man followed you most of the way home. You slowed down, letting him get closer, feeling his eyes on you. You were disappointed when he got spooked and stopped following you. You live alone, and you don’t lock the doors and windows of your apartment when you go to bed. You know you are very stupid. You guess you must be very lucky.

How lucky are you? Lucky enough to live with a rare chronic illness, to carry a card in your wallet and a stainless steel bracelet on your wrist, just in case your faculties aren’t intact when the medics show up. Lucky enough to have joints that ache on a good day and that scream when it rains, to have days when your exhaustion is so enormous it crushes you into your bed like a sack of stones, days when you can’t keep anything down and the strain of emptying your stomach so much leaves you with a throbbing headache. Lucky enough that your thin skin splits at the slightest provocation, that your hollow organs would burst if you so much as looked at an unplanned pregnancy. Lucky enough to be medicated, because you won’t live long enough for liver failure to catch up to you. All this, and you’re still here today. You lucky girl.


	2. Ein Mensch Geht Um Die Ecke

Tonight, you are abusing your luck as usual. You could have been home a half hour ago, but you took the long way to draw out the time. You’ve got earbuds in your ears playing loud music. Your hand is in your purse, you are holding your knife. You are trying your best to not pay attention to your surroundings, and as you emerge out of an alleyway onto a well-lit street, you realize you’ve been doing such a good job that you’ve walked into a police cordon. You shrink back into the dark you came from, hoping not to be noticed by the cops. You watch curiously for a moment from the alleyway, then go back the way you came. You’re not sure if you’re annoyed at having to walk around the cordoned-off area to get home, but your knees don’t hurt too much today, and you were already stalling anyway.

Why did they lock down those few blocks? Were they keeping people out, or attempting to keep someone in? Had they forgotten the little alleyway you’d happened onto? You wonder if you should have waved down an officer, showed them they’d left a gap. Then you remember you’ve got some green (for pain, but it’s not prescription), and of course, your knife. You’re not too keen on jail. You keep walking in the opposite direction of the cops. 

It takes a little while to get around the cordon, but soon you’re within blocks of your house. You start taking odd diversions again, wanting to stay out just a little longer. You turn sharply onto yet another dimly-lit side street, but you have to stop suddenly to avoid running into someone. You do something of a double-take; his face doesn’t register exactly right at first glance. It would be hard enough to make sense of just the scars, but the paint, the hollow eyes, the slashed mouth… that elevates him to the level of a sleep-paralysis hallucination. You feel your heartbeat quicken dizzyingly.

The Joker stares back at you, seemingly unsurprised and unimpressed. He doesn’t look his usual self, though granted you’ve only seen him on TV and in newspapers. His posture is slumped and weary, he’s clutching at his right side, just under his ribs. You’re quite sure he’s hurt. You think you may now understand what the cordon was for. You feel suddenly more aware of your hand in your purse, of the knife.

If there were ever a person to use it on, isn’t this him? You know he murders people like it’s going out of style, so why should you feel any reticence about taking him down? You’d be doing your entire city a favor, if you could manage it. Then again, you probably _can’t_ manage it; you’re fragile on your best days, and there’s no worse person to run at with a knife. Perhaps (and this thrills you) you’re not so lucky after all.

The two of you are still staring at each other. You hate to admit it, but he’s sort of… _visually fascinating_ in person. He knows how to pick a color palette, at least. You’re not sure what to make of the fact that he hasn’t yet moved to hurt you. Maybe he’s too injured to try. You don’t know if it’s wise to turn your back on him, though you are tempted to make some threatening move toward him, see if he’ll dispatch you as efficiently as some of his other victims. You’ve wanted to die for so long, and now you’ve found someone up to the job.

“So… do ya have, uuuuuh, somewhere to _be?_ You’re certainly not ac- _ting_ like it…”

His voice pulls you out of your racing mind, back down to earth. You decide to try being nosy, see if you can get him to sate your curiosity about the cordon.

“No, I… I don’t really have anywhere to be. Did you get shot?” You gesture to the blood leaking out from between his fingers. 

He hums, a high sound like he’s in doubt somehow. “I’d say I’ve been _grazed,_ if anything.” He takes his hand away from the wound and does a turn, as if this will allow you to look him over better. He does jazz hands at the end, and you hate that it’s funny, but it _is._ You are surprised at how oddly _endearing_ you find him, how the two of you have barely spoken and he’s already got you laughing. It scares you. You get a strange idea, one that you think could probably get you into a lot of trouble.

You let go of the knife in your purse, and pick up something else; a little bag of medicine and first-aid supplies you keep with you at all times. He notices you rummaging for something and his eyes darken.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you,” you say, and he giggles.

“Sweet pea, you _couldn’t_ if you _trrriiiied._ ” He ambles closer, and you notice he’s limping slightly. He peers down at what you’re doing, and you feel his breath on your forehead as you search your first-aid kit. You’re suddenly more nervous, but you’re not too sure why. You’ve given prescription pills to people before, usually patrons at the library: old people with arthritic pains like your own, teens having their first period cramps. This is, of course, a little different.

“Here, take these,” you say, and you hold out a bottle of meloxicam, a tube of diclofenac, and a box of suture strips. He looks down at your offerings, and back up at you, raising an eyebrow.

“The pills are an anti-inflammatory, so is the ointment. They’ll help with joint pains, bruises, and probably whatever’s happened to your leg. These,” you hold up the box of strips, “are for closing up wounds when you can’t go to a hospital for stitches. You can get more on your own, if you need them. They’re not prescription.”

“ _Well_ doc, if you in- _sist…”_ His gloved hands eclipse your own, scooping up the medicine. He tucks it into the inside pockets of his coat. Some of his blood is on your right hand now. You get another idea, even worse than the last.

“One more thing,” and you fish the knife out of your purse. Closed, it is smaller and easily concealed in your fist. He holds out his hand, clearly amused at the impromptu gift-giving session, and you fold the knife that tried to kill you into his palm. His eyes widen slightly when he sees what you’ve given him. He laughs, his voice raw and ragged, before flicking it open and examining it in the dim light that filters into the alley.

“Now, _there’s_ a gal after my own _heart!_ What’s a _pretty_ little thing like _you_ doing with a _naaaasty_ tool like _this?_ ” He waves it too close to your face, right under your nose. You’re quiet for a moment. 

“Just… take good care of it. Please. It tried to kill me once.” You turn and run out of the side street, surprised that he doesn’t try to stop you, grab you and drag you back. Between your shoulder blades you feel a strange crawling in the skin, like you’re waiting for the blade of your own knife to settle itself there. But it doesn’t. You keep running and you don’t look back, in case eye contact would somehow coax him to follow you. After a few blocks you slow to a walk. You go straight home without taking any more unnecessary turns, rubbing his blood ( _his_ blood!) between two fingers until it is dry and tacky. 


	3. Welches War Dein Preis?

He is surprised to find her apartment door open. He always checks before picking a lock or kicking in a door (why do work you don’t have to?), but it’s rare these days that he finds an unlocked door with anything worth a shit behind it. It almost feels like an invitation, and this has him just the slightest bit giddy. He makes some noise shutting the door behind him, wipes his feet ostentatiously on a mat in the entry, walks in with heavy footsteps. He hums a little, knocks on the walls as he passes. He likes the thought of her hearing him, waking up and waiting frozen for the monster to peek its head around her bedroom door.

Disappointingly, she seems to be a heavy sleeper. He turns on the light and watches her back rise and fall peacefully with her breathing, feeling almost… offended. He’ll just have to make a little more noise, won’t he? He goes through her things, rattling her makeup around, slamming drawers, bumping into furniture. He finds a bottle of perfume on her dresser, sprays it into the air to see what it smells like. It smells like her, the way she smelled the other night when she _so earnestly_ pressed her pills into his hands. He slips the bottle into the pocket of his coat. He checks behind him. She’s still asleep. He frowns. 

He walks over to the desk in the corner and flips through a stack of papers, then yanks out all of the desk drawers so that their contents spill noisily onto the floor. There’s a diary in all of the mess, and his mood improves just slightly. He grins, but his smile falls immediately when he opens it up to a random page. The dates are readable, but the entries are in another language, something… Slavic-looking, maybe. He groans in frustration, then rips out every page dated after the other night, when they met, tucking the crumpled paper into his coat pocket. He turns to see if any of _that_ woke her up. It did not. 

He curses, throws the diary back onto the desk. The goddamn front door was easy, but everything after? Almost _intentionally_ irritating. He is _done_ with subtlety; the little of it he’s so far attempted to employ has gotten him nowhere. Fuck it.


	4. Mit 'Nem Messer In Dem Brust

You are awakened by your bed pitching around. It takes a bit for it to really register, you’ve had a pretty bad day for fatigue. It does get your attention, though, when your foggy brain realizes that _someone_ has to be doing this. Beds don’t buck like horses all on their own. You sit up, your knees drawn to your chest, and rub your eyes.

“Hiiiii.” He’s at the foot of your bed, holding up the end of your mattress. He gives you a real shit-eating grin, just the smuggest face you’ve ever seen. You frown. Your first thought is of the knife.

“Are you taking good care of it?” His smug smile drops, as does the mattress. Apparently, this is not the reaction he’d hoped for.

“Hmmmmm. That’s a _serious_ question, and _I’d_ been hoping to have a little more… **_fun!_** ” He jumps up onto the bed and crawls toward you until the two of you are almost nose-to-nose. Though you might like to put a little space between the two of you (though not _too_ much… you’re ashamed at how often you’ve thought of his breath on your hair, his hands brushing over yours in the alleyway), you’re far too physically exhausted to roll around playing tag. You try to turn away at least, but he grabs your face with both his gloved hands and forces you to look at him head-on, obviously somewhat triumphant at your signs of discomfort. You smell gasoline very strongly, his breath is hot against your face, and tendrils of his long green hair hang between the two of you, brushing against your nose. 

“Ya _see_ , you were pretty _speedy_ about your exit the other night, _Cin-derella_. Stroke a’ midnight and all that, _I understand!_ ” He pouts, as if sympathizing with your imagined plight.

_“Still,_ we didn’t even get the chance _to introduce ourselves!_ ” He grins wickedly, and one hand leaves your cheek to pull out the meloxicam you gave him, rattling the pills in your face. “ ** _But!_** You left me a _shoooooe!_ ”

You exhaustedly drag your eyes to the bottle, and you realize how stupid you’ve been. You _know_ your address is printed on your medication, but you’ve only ever given out single pills before, and you were so surprised, so confused, gave the entire bottle to him on some wild whim. You hadn’t thought it through at all…

“I thought I’d just,” he bounces, and the bed shakes under him, “ _drop in_ and return these to ya. ‘Cause I, uh, figure there must be _some_ reason you carry ‘em around. Are ya _sick_ , princess? Does the shoe _fit?_ _Hmmmmm?_ ” He rattles the pills in your face again.

“You can keep them,” you say, pushing his hands down out of your face, “I get more every month whether I’ve used them all or not. I have extra.” His hands and fingers tangle with your own, and as you try, weakly, to push them down, he slaps lightly back. You giggle a bit, out of your mind with weariness, hating how his absurdity seems to connect with your sense of humor. You finally give up on pushing his hands away. He grabs your wrists and sways you back and forth by them as he hums tunelessly, smiling at your resignation. 

You are too tired for this, for any of it. You can barely keep your eyes open, let alone fully grasp the seriousness of what’s going on. You know you should be scared and upset, but your regard for your own safety is low at the best of times, and there’s an unreal, dreamy cast to everything that’s happening right now.

“So, _why’d_ ya waste some of your extra medicine on li’l ole _me?_ Didja mis- _take_ me for _somebody nicer?_ Prince _Charrrr-minnnng_ maybe?” He still has your wrists, and he frames his face with your hands as if taking a glamour shot, then continues to sway you around. You try to ignore it, and search your brain for a good reason. You don’t have one, didn’t have one the night you crammed your meds into his hands. You just did… what you felt like doing? In that moment? Your head is lolling as he dances you, his jostling of your arms not making much difference to the fog that covers your brain. It even feels nice, in a weird way… and still you don’t know why you did it… 

“ **WAKEUP!** ” He screams it right in your ear, giddy, and slaps you with your own hands. You snap back awake. His face is a hair’s breadth from touching yours, and he studies your eyes for a moment as you attempt to stay present.

“You’re a, uh, a pretty _deep_ _sleeper,_ ya know that?” You nod a yes, the two of you almost knocking heads. He goes whole hog and bumps his forehead against yours, roughly but not painfully, and you are once again alarmed at how funny that is, how oddly comfortable you are despite his intrusions on your personal space. Every move he makes drips with malice, you shouldn’t find any of it endearing or comforting, no matter how exhausted you are. And yet, here you are pack-bonding with a fucking murderer… The deepest, quietest part of you, the part that feels the absence of the knife like a missing limb, stirs at that thought. _A Murderer!_

_“_ More of a _Snoring Beauty_ than a Cinderella,” he laughs at his own joke, and you smile weakly, your body screaming at you to go back to sleep.

“Ya know, it’s becoming _clear_ to me that I’m, uh, failing to hold your attention, _princess._ It’s been a _nap and a half_ since I asked you my question, and you _still_ haven’t answered me. Maybe I need to try a _different_ approach.” You hear a very familiar sound, a quiet _schick_ of metal against metal; he lightly presses the knife that tried to kill you against your throat. Memories of the too-bright lights of the ER float, unbidden, to the top of your mind. Your eyes well with tears and it becomes difficult to breathe. He smiles, apparently liking what he sees.

“Do I have your attention _now,_ doll?” He strokes your cheek with one hand, while the other keeps your knife at your throat. You fight through layers of memory, veils of pain and fear and shame which threaten to bury you completely, and you nod, your eyes locked on his. You try to steady your breathing, to block out the constant flashing image of your own arms marked with red, red so bright and garish it could almost be fake, but you’ve got the scars to prove it was terribly real. Your limbs are cold, so cold and numb and you can barely manage to breathe at all, let alone to stop yourself from gasping raggedly, irregularly, desperately, when your lungs _do_ open up. He casually watches the entire process of your coming undone with open curiosity, keeping the pressure of the knife against your throat consistent.

“Oooooh, _that’s_ right,” he croons to you, “ _This_ knife tried to _kill you_ once. That sounds like an _interesting_ story. How ‘bout you _tell it_ to me?”

You know you’ve no hope of actually speaking right now. Your hands are shaking so badly you almost can’t manage it, but you push up the sleeves of your sweatshirt and raise your arms beside your head, showing him the pale, shiny scars which roll and twist the skin of your forearms into a lumpy mess. He cocks his head to one side, and then you feel the pressure of the knife on your throat lessen as he drags the blade lightly over your skin, down to your collarbone and along your shoulder, finally reaching the crook of your arm. You’ve been immobilized so far, by your exhaustion and your fear, but this brings out such a strong revulsion in you that you shrink back, pressing into your headboard without even meaning to move. He taps on your scarred flesh with the tip of the knife.

“Now, uh, I don’t wanna _doubt_ your _word,_ sweetheart, but _somehow_ I don’t think _the knife_ did this all on its _own._ Did it _maybe_ have a little _help?_ Did the call come from _inside the house?_ ”

You nod, still unable to speak properly past your ragged gasps and sobs, and he _tsk_ s and slowly shakes his head, his body language a vicious parody of sympathy. He withdraws the knife, folding it away, and his hand leaves your cheek. Your shuddering breaths finally begin to return to normal. Without his hands bracing you, you’re unable to keep sitting up. You slide down your headboard until you’re almost laying down, and your folded legs bump into him. He giggles, and stands up from your bed.

“ _Let’s_ put you to rights, princess. You got _a little_ upset, there.” He grabs you by the ankles and straightens your legs out, pulling you into place, then bends to pick up your comforter from the floor and tucks you into it (far too tightly). He leans over you, bracing his arms on either side of your shoulders. His hair falls in your face again.

“Are ya _comfy?_ ” He wriggles his shoulders around, and his hair sways and tickles your tear-streaked face. You most decidedly are not comfortable, but you nod anyway, and he pats you (much too hard) on your head.

“ _Well,_ don’t get _too_ comfortable, ‘cause I’m comin’ _back_ sometime **_sooooon._** Don’t let the bedbugs bi- _te._ ” He bares his teeth at you, in more of a grimace than a grin, before turning your lights off and leaving your bedroom, shutting your door behind him. As the adrenaline leaves your system, a full-body weakness adds itself to the exhaustion you already felt, and you sink dizzily into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, thank you for reading what's been posted so far. I hope you've enjoyed it, sorry there's not really anything particularly shippy yet. For those who are interested, the fic title and the chapter titles are from the German lyrics of the Threepenny Opera song "Mack the Knife." It's great fun to listen to, and also reminds me so much of your and my favorite knife-wielding murderous clown. Hopefully, I'll have the time and energy to add more to this soon. Take care! <3


	5. Sie Wachte Auf Und War Geschändet

When your alarm rings, you force yourself to wake up long enough to call in sick from work. After several more hours’ sleep, you awake with a buzzing headache in the midday sun. You are long past any time in your life when it would have been rational to do so, but you can’t help berating yourself viciously for your own fragility. _A little interrupted sleep, a little crying jag, and suddenly I can’t make it to work? I work_ ** _late shift!_** _Pathetic. The_ ** _fucking Joker_** _showed up in my apartment, it could have turned out so much fucking worse than it did, and I can’t even handle_ ** _this?_**

This self-castigation is an old habit, and a difficult one to kick. It dates from the days before your diagnosis, when, as far as anyone could tell, you were just sensitive and lazy. It used to be motivating, when you were younger and sometimes had the energy to power through a bad day, but now it’s just annoying. The only way you’ve found to counter your own criticism is to find a reason why you should be given some slack. You consider how you were treated last night, looking for reasons why it was bad enough to keep you home today.

You pull out a hand-mirror from your bedside drawer. Thrashing and sobbing while a knife is pressed to your throat has to leave something behind, right? You turn, stretching the skin of your neck in the light from the window. There it is, a pink line, really no more than a few faint scratches. You are surprised, but grateful, that it isn’t worse. Perhaps you can avoid difficult questions when you return to work tomorrow.

You draw your knees up under your chin and cover your aching eyes with your fingertips. Is it wise to be relieved there’s no proof of what’s happened? Even his grip on your wrists was somehow gentle enough to leave no bruises. Was he purposefully careful with you? Does he know what’s wrong with you? Your meds wouldn’t really have given him any clues, you didn’t give him anything stronger than a heavy-duty anti-inflammatory; they work on pretty much everything from old sports injuries to arthritic grandmas.

All the same, he’s left you nothing, not even one of his cards. If you wanted to tell the police, would they believe you? What would they think of your having given him the medicine, the knife? You could lie, maybe. He could have stolen those things from you as easily as you gave them to him. You feel doubtful that they would believe him over you, that is, if they believed any of this in the first place. What do you have, what do you _really_ have, that makes this seem like anything other than a random home invasion?

You decide to push the dilemma of contacting law enforcement to a later time. For now, you’ve got to take your meds and get your bedroom back in order. Sleeping in later than the time you’d normally take your medicine has you feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck. Your coffee has gone cold in the pot while you slept in. You drink it black, washing down your pills and cringing at the overwhelming bitterness of it all, the coffee and medicine together. 

After your knife tried to kill you, they put you on fluoxetine, 20mg a day. It would be a great joke if it were even a little bit funny; family history of bipolar and schizophrenia, you almost die and they put you on fucking Prozac, the lowest possible dose, not even a referral for therapy. It does nothing. You could ask for a higher dosage, a medication more suited to your needs, and you probably should, yet every time you visit you choose not to. It’s as though you are convinced you deserve to be miserable.

You finish your coffee, the dry toast you eat every day that somehow counts as taking your medicine “with food.” You tie your hair back and reluctantly approach the mess on the other side of your room. He’s thrown your makeup on the floor hard enough for your eyeshadow and blush to break and crumble out of the pan. You salvage what you can and blot the rest off of the floor with a wet paper towel. When everything is rearranged on your dresser, the one thing still missing is your perfume. It’s not under the dresser, and the bottle doesn’t appear to have rolled anywhere else that you can see. Your heart sinks a little, because it’s expensive and you’ve only just bought this latest bottle; it was still mostly full. You make a note to look out for it.

Next, you re-fit your drawers back into your desk, and scoop your pens and art suppliesinto them. The top of your desk looks as though it’s been swept clean of everything but your diary, which shouldn’t even be there anyway. You feel like its place of prominence is meant to be some sort of sign from the asshole who put it there, so you open it to where your last entry would be, expecting a scrawled threat. _Ah. Of course. Something worse._ The last two pages have been ripped out. _Lovely._

You lean on the wall and run your thumb over the tattered edge poking from the book’s binding, wondering what he thinks he’s doing. You’ve kept your diary in cipher since fifth grade, when your best friend read it out loud to a boy you both had a crush on. It’s a simple substitution cipher, random Cyrillic letters as stand-ins for the Roman alphabet, not hard to crack for someone who’s got the time, but you can’t imagine that he would trouble himself that much for you. What does he think he’ll find, anyway? Perhaps he took it because he thinks it’s incriminating, because it could prove his presence on a certain street at a certain time. That makes no sense at all, though. He breaks the law with impunity, and if he were so afraid of that information getting out, he wouldn’t try to rip it out of your diary; he’d kill you for knowing it at all.

If he would take pages out of your diary, would he take your perfume? You have an even harder time understanding why he would do _that._ You put your diary back into its drawer and crouch on the floor again. You have a pretty good line of sight to the spaces under all the furniture in your room, and it’s not there. You lean back against the wall again, still sitting on the floor. What on earth would he want with your perfume? Does he like the smell of it? Does he like-

You don’t allow yourself to explore that line of thought any further. The Joker does not _like_ anyone, he does not fucking _like_ you, he is _amused_ by you at best. He entered your home and put a knife to your throat because you were stupid enough to show him kindness, behavior so out of the norm that he felt compelled to question you about it. He tucked you into bed not because he _likes_ you but because doing so emphasized the utter control he had over you in the moment, and any doubts you have about his motivation should be put to rest by the way he threatened to visit you again soon. He doesn’t _like_ you, if anything he knows that there is a part of you that _likes_ him, and he’s using that against you. If he took your perfume, and he probably fucking _didn’t_ , it was just another way to mess with your head. You feel so ashamed and stupid and ugly. “ _Does he_ ** _like_** _me,” what the_ ** _fuck_** _am I even talking about? What kind of person even gives into wishful thinking like that? I want a murderer to_ ** _like me,_** _to take keepsakes from me,_ _I’m so fucking pathetic, what the_ ** _fuck…_**

You spiral in self-hatred for a little while, too long really, on the floor. Eventually, the torrent of awful thoughts peters out, leaving you feeling oddly numb. There’s a tickling feeling on your cheek, and you realize now that you’ve been crying. You wipe away the tears and gather up some of the scattered papers you can reach from where you’re sitting. You stand up and set them back down on your desk, and then you finish picking up the rest of your books and papers. When you’re done, you wander into the bathroom to take a shower.

In the bathroom, you stare at yourself in the mirror. You think about your knife, how long you kept it after you… after it tried to kill you. How close you kept it, for such a long time, and the person you eventually chose to give it to. 

You trace the slightly rough texture of the scratch on your neck with your fingertips. Aren’t you getting exactly what you wanted? Your response last night- your horror at the knife’s blade pressed to your skin- that was automatic. Pure psychology, just a rote reaction to past trauma. Everything else you’re doing? Your partiality to him, your reticence to contact anyone who could help you, the way you made yourself unique to him on the night the two of you met? Those are choices you’re making. Ultimately, they are the same choices you make when you stay out late or close your front door behind you without locking it. You are the same person you were when the knife- _no,_ when _you_ made those cuts on your arms. 

You back up from the mirror and rub your eyes. You turn on some music, loud enough to keep you from having to think anymore, and step into the shower.


	6. Der Haifisch

Tonight you are awake and you are ready. He didn’t keep his promise of returning soon, and you’ve stewed in anticipation for nearly two weeks since he wrecked your room and terrorized you. You’ve stayed up late almost every night trying to catch him as he arrives, and sleep hasn’t come easy even when you’ve had fatigue flares. In the evenings you’ve been rereading your favorite book to pass the time _,_ but it barely holds your attention as your nerves thrum and you react to every little noise in your apartment. 

Tonight, you jump when you hear your doorknob turning, then mark your page and look up expectantly from your spot on the couch. This is the same routine you’ve followed every time you thought you heard a noise, but this time he opens your front door, plain as day, and you wonder to yourself how he got to your floor without being seen. You consider the possibility of murdered maintenance people and mailroom guys, their bodies splayed at the bottom of the elevator shaft, flies landing on lifeless eyes in the dark. You feel guilty. He slams your door behind him.

“ _Honeyyyy,_ I’m _hoooome!_ ” He spreads his arms wide, as if you would run into them like the TV housewives his words evoke. What _would_ he do if you ran to him that way? You push that thought aside; it is almost certainly borne of suicidal impulse.

“Looks like _I’ll_ have to do all the _talking,_ ” he says, dropping his arms, “as _usual._ ” He stalks toward you, but you stand and move to get some obstacles between the two of you. He leans over the back of a chair with a wicked grin.

“Not so sleepy _tonight_ , are ya, Beauty? What’s the matter, you think I’m gonna _hurt you_?” There are missing patches in his greasepaint tonight, places where his skin peeks through. You remember his blood on your hand the night you met. _He is only a man._

“Seems likely,” you say, and he cackles.

“Well, okay, ya might be _right_ about that,” He says with a shrug, and he launches himself over the chair toward you. You evade him in a circular path, playing a short game of the-floor-is-lava; your only apparent escape route is on top of and over your living room furniture. Surprisingly, you make it over the back of the same chair he just vaulted, and you land without hurting yourself, but you’ve only taken a few steps toward your door when you step wrong and roll your right ankle. Your leg crumples under you and you go down.

He is on you in an instant, his hands pulling you roughly to turn and face him. He radiates heat, and the too-warm feeling of him pinning you down mixed with the pain in your ankle has nausea blooming in your stomach. You swallow thickly and breathe deeply through your nose, trying to push the feeling down. You notice something… odd.

“Are you _wearing my perfume?!_ ” Incredulity and rage contort your face and dull your pain as he laughs at you, and you beat your fists against his chest. He allows you to push him off, leaning back as his shoulders shake with laughter.

“ _Seriously?!_ You actually fucking stole it? I thought it was just lost but you _stole it! You were gonna murder me_ ** _wearing my own perfume?_** ”

“ _Murder-_ ” he hoots shrilly, waving his hands about his head, his voice cut off by another peal of laughter- “You _stole- AAaa_ ah-HAha… Y-y-you were gonna _murder meeeeeeeeaahhhhh-HA-HA!_ ” He is mocking you, but he can barely choke out a full girly-voiced impression before laughter overtakes him again. There are tears in his eyes now, and he kicks his legs like a dying cockroach, beating his feet on your floor. Petty anger rises within you and you pin his ankles down, leaning over him.

“I _know_ you tore up my diary, too! What are you even gonna do with those, huh? You can’t even fucking _read them!_ ” You growl the words in his stupid face with as much venom as you can muster, but it only inspires him to greater heights of delusional laughter. He waves his hands at you weakly.

“Oooooo-ho-ho s-s-taaahh-hah-ha-ah-HAHaahAHAhha-” he attempts to quell the laughter and fails- “ _STO-ha-hop,_ you’re gah _-HA…_ gonna make me _piss myseh-he-helf!_ ” You only get angrier as he laughs at you. An odd sort of shame spreads heat over your cheeks as you realize exactly why this is so frustrating. You want too much from him; you want him to like you, you want him to ravish you, you want him to stab you to death. He just wants to steal your stuff and laugh at you.

You take your hands from his ankles and attempt to stand, but you’re in too much pain and it keeps you off balance. Just when it seems that you _might_ be making some progress towards standing up, he’s up from the floor like a shot, hugging you around the hips and slinging you over one shoulder. His laughter, which seemed so inescapable for him just seconds ago, is cut short, as if he were able to switch his glee on and off like a light.

“ _Ah_ -ta-ta-taaa, Cindy- _rella_ , no sense in leavin’ the ball _early_ tonight! _You’re_ the hostess, after all.” He twirls around, and it seems dangerously off-balance. He’s got one arm around your thighs and one around your waist, but he’s tall and your position feels terribly precarious to you. You brace your hands flat against him to get some stability, and you feel the muscle of his back rolling beneath his clothes. Seeing as you _were_ right about the perfume, what if you can get at least _one_ of the things you want from him?

“You know, as your hostess, if you put me down I could show you _far better_ hospitality,” you try. His low laughter rumbles underneath your ribs and hands, and warmth radiates from him, spreads through your body.

“Is that a _promise,_ Princess? No _running off_ , no _falling asleep?_ ”

You have more than enough odd scraps of memory- his hands holding your face, his breath on your hair, his presence in your bed, and now the smell of gasoline mixed with your perfume- to imagine something further (and you _have_ imagined it, several times, over the last two weeks). You smile to yourself, balling up some of the fabric of his coat in your fist.

“Yes.”

He sets you down carefully, mindful of your ankle, but his kiss is sudden and not even slightly gentle; your teeth actually click together. He tastes chemical, cosmetic, and you realize it’s the paint. You giggle, and he growls in response, deepens the kiss, his arms winding more tightly around your waist to lift some of your weight off your right leg and pull you completely flush against him. You run your hands up his chest, bringing them to his face. You smile as he pulls away slightly, your bottom lip between his teeth. You were right. _You were_ ** _right._**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! This latest chapter is a bit... silly. I hope you don't mind! I would like to let you all know that the rating for this work may change to explicit upon the next update. I'm still not decided on that, and I don't mind if you weigh in with what you prefer. Of course, thank you all for reading this far! <3


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